How to brief a web designer – a practical guide

Holes in the brief can result in a website that does nothing for your business

Key takeaway: A web design brief is a document that outlines your business goals, target audience, content requirements and functionality needs, enabling your designer to create a website that genuinely works for your business rather than just looks pretty.

I have worked on hundreds of website projects over the last 25 years. The single biggest predictor of whether a project runs smoothly or turns into a nightmare is the quality of the brief.

A thorough brief reduces revisions, miscommunication and project delays. It ultimately delivers a website that works harder for your business.

When clients turn up with a vague idea of what they want, designers have to guess. Guessing leads to concepts that miss the mark. Missing the mark leads to revisions. Revisions cost time and money.

The opposite is also true. When clients provide a clear, well-considered brief, designers can get it right first time. Or at least get very close.

Think of it like this: if you commissioned an architect to design your house but did not tell them how many bedrooms you needed, you would not blame the architect when the plans came back wrong.

What to include in your web design brief

A proper brief does not need to be a 50 page document. It needs to be useful. Here are the essential components:

• Business objectives – what do you actually want this website to achieve?
• Target audience profiles – who are you trying to reach?
• Competitor examples – who else operates in your space?
• Brand guidelines – logos, colours, fonts, tone of voice
• Required functionality – what does the site need to do?
• Content inventory – what content do you have or need to create?
• Budget and timeline – be realistic about both

The more specific you can be, the better. Vague statements like “we want it to look modern” give designers nothing to work with. Specific statements like “we want to generate 20 qualified leads per month from organic search” give them everything.

Defining your business goals and target audience

This is where most briefs fall down. Clients focus on what they want the website to look like rather than what they want it to do.

Before you even think about colours and fonts, answer these questions:

• What is the primary action you want visitors to take?
• How will you measure success?
• Who is your ideal customer?
• What problems do they have that you solve?
• What objections might they have?

Your website exists to convert visitors into customers. Everything else is secondary. If your designer does not know who your customers are and what motivates them, they cannot design a site that speaks to them.

This is also where you need to think about how people will find you. Search optimisation is not something you bolt on at the end. It needs to be baked into the strategy from day one.

The same goes for AI visibility. People are increasingly finding businesses through AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. If you want to be recommended by these systems, you need to build your site with that in mind from the outset. Understanding why website strategy is crucial for AI citations will help you think about this properly.

Gathering examples and inspiration that actually help

Clients love to send over links to websites they like. This is helpful, but only if you explain why you like them.

There is a big difference between aesthetic preferences and strategic requirements. You might like the look of Apple’s website, but that does not mean Apple’s design approach is right for your plumbing business.

When sharing examples, be specific:

• “I like how this site organises their services into clear categories”
• “This checkout process is really simple – I want something similar”
• “The photography style here feels right for our audience”

Also share examples of what you do not like. Knowing what to avoid is just as valuable as knowing what to aim for.

According to the UK Government Digital Service, good website design starts with understanding user needs. Your examples should demonstrate that you have thought about what your visitors need, not just what you personally find attractive.

Content and functionality requirements to consider

The biggest lie in web design is “design it first, then we will write the copy”. This is completely backwards.

Your content should drive the design, not the other way around. If you do not know what you want to say, how can a designer know how to say it?

Before approaching a designer, you should have at least a rough outline of:

• What pages you need
• What content goes on each page
• What calls to action you want
• What forms or interactive elements are required
• What third party integrations you need (payment systems, CRM, booking tools)

If you are planning a new website design and build, getting your content sorted early will make the entire process smoother and faster.

Functionality requirements are particularly important because they affect cost and timeline significantly. A simple brochure site is a completely different project to an e-commerce site with member logins and subscription management.

Common briefing mistakes that derail projects

I see the same mistakes repeatedly. Avoid these and your project will run much more smoothly:

Designing by committee. Too many stakeholders with conflicting opinions kills projects. Nominate one decision maker and stick with them.

Focusing on design over function. A beautiful website that does not convert is worthless. Functionality first, aesthetics second.

Unrealistic budgets. You cannot get a custom built website that rivals Jaguar’s for five thousand pounds. Be honest about what you can spend and your designer can be honest about what that buys.

Vague timelines. “As soon as possible” is not a deadline. Pick a realistic date and work backwards from it.

Ignoring SEO. If nobody can find your website, it does not matter how good it looks. Search visibility needs to be part of the conversation from the start, not an afterthought.

Not involving the right people. If someone else writes your content or manages your marketing, they need to be involved in the briefing process.

Research from Forbes consistently shows that digital projects fail more often due to poor planning and communication than technical issues.

Questions to ask before your first meeting

Before you sit down with a web designer, work through these questions yourself:

• What is the one thing we want visitors to do on our website?
• Who are our three main competitors and what do their websites do well?
• What do we have that our competitors do not?
• Who makes the final decisions on this project?
• What is our realistic budget?
• What is our realistic timeline?
• What content do we already have and what needs creating?
• How will we measure success?
• What happens after launch – who maintains and updates the site?

If you cannot answer these questions, you are not ready to brief a designer. Take the time to work through them properly. It will save you significant pain later.

Making the brief work for both of you

A good brief is a conversation starter, not a contract. Expect your designer to push back on things, ask clarifying questions and suggest alternatives.

The best projects happen when clients and designers work together as partners. You bring the business knowledge. They bring the design and technical expertise. Neither can do a great job without the other.

If you are preparing to work with a web designer and want to make sure you get it right, put the time into your brief. It is the single most important document in any website project.

Ready to start a conversation about your website? Find out how we approach website projects and see if we might be a good fit for what you need.